The advent of the Internet and World Wide Web within the Internet has increased the demand for more sophisticated types of document presentation. For example, users sending and receiving information over the Internet or other network often expect to see a document having a number of different presentation styles in order to distinguish between different types of information. For example, a user viewing an HTML mail application may see a document divided into a header and a footer. Similarly, a person viewing a web site may see an upper column having advertising, a right row having a site index, and the remainder of the web site comprising the body of text.
As illustrated in FIGS. 1(a) to 1(c), present systems and methods require that a user create a plurality of documents in order to present a single document having independently formatted regions. FIG. 1(a) is the index file that provides the structure of the regions, while FIGS. 1(b) and 1(c) provide the content. Once the source code for each of these documents is transmitted to a terminal device, such as a computer with a web browser, a document is rendered having the appearance of the document in FIG. 2. Thus, portions of a conventional document are stored as separate HTML files which the system must assemble in the right sequence to prepare an email or other framed page, and changing or editing one of the HTML files does not automatically ensure that other fields will be properly conformed.
These and other drawbacks exist with other systems.